Many conventional Internet-browser applications (“browsers”) include one or more security “zones” that allow a user to apply one or more security policies to web sites accessible to the browsers. Such a security policy may govern whether an accessed web site is allowed to, for example, run ActiveX controls on or automatically upload/download software to the system on which the browser is running. As shown in FIG. 1, the browser may include a “Restricted” zone represented by a user interface 10 displayable on a display device (not shown) and having one or more fields 20A, 20B that a user can populate with the domain identifiers of web sites to which the user would like to apply a comparatively restrictive security policy. In the example illustrated in FIG. 1, the user has previously placed several domain identifiers (e.g., www.abc.com, www.cba.com) in the Restricted zone, a fact illustrated in field 20B. As such, the browser applies a predefined security policy associated with the Restricted zone to each of the web sites associated with the domain identifiers displayed in field 20B. If the user wishes to add a web site to the Restricted zone, the user must type or otherwise manually enter the domain identifier into the field 20A.
As the number of web sites that the user wishes to add to a zone increases, it should be appreciated that the task of employing a user interface, such as the interface 10 of FIG. 1, to manually enter each associated domain identifier becomes increasingly nontrivial. Moreover, by the time the user decides to so restrict a web site, it is highly possible that the user has already suffered some negative effect from accessing the web site due to the user being previously unaware of the harmful nature of the web site.